Elsinore - "The Art of Pulling" (video) (Premiere)

by PopMatters Staff

Elsinore's latest tune begins as a achingly beautiful chamber pop tune before crashing into its hard-charging anthemic chorus. In another words, it's a great pop tune.

Like all great pop tunes “The Art of Pulling” is also memorable. Elsinore’s Ryan Groff tells us that “this song, along with the entire PUSH/PULL record, is about living with yourself and the people around you. I’m in my early 30s now, my wife and I have a one-year-old, and Elsinore has been together for over nine years. I’m more introspective, quirky, and creative than ever. So, I wanted the themes of the record to reflect all of those traits. “The Art of Pulling” is a wake-up-call of a song, asking the “you” in the song to get up and DO something. It’s about pulling in a lot of different ways. And I tried to describe them all lyrically, but have the music be ultimately upbeat and dancey.

“And, with the video, I think we achieved an exact visual interpretation of what the song means. Our videographer, director, and other crew were all on-board to make something beautiful and cinematic. We definitely accomplished that, and we were able to involve over 50 close friends and our favorite locations around Champaign-Urbana, a true Midwestern setting. This video shows anyone who wants to watch it who we are as a band. And hopefully a lot of people like it.”

Meanwhile the video’s director, Chris Sotelo, says, “we approached this music video similar to a short film. The idea and script came together over a span of a few months, but the real challenge was to put everything together before cold weather took hold of the Midwest. While we had a lightning quick pre-production, we were incredibly blessed to have many people in our community—local artists, actors, businesses, and volunteers—come alongside us, willing to help throughout the shoot. One of the creative challenges we had in the production was figuring out a way to visually express the idea of an epiphany or inspiration. We ended up utilizing a combination of colored powder and smoke grenades, which seemed straightforward enough. By the end of our production though, we ended up going through close to a hundred smoke grenades! The theme of the music video is one that is close to our hearts and we hope that others are able to find inspiration in it.”